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Corsican language   The language is spoken on the island of Corse has long been subject to arguments and discussions in Romance linguistics. Scientists are still in doubt whether Corsican should be referred to as an Italian dialect, a French dialect or a separate language which is close to Italian, Occitan, Catalan and French. Anyway, Corsican is much alike Italian, but as the island has belonged to France for about two centuries, it acquired many French traits. Citizens of Corse speak both languages without mixing them in social communication.

The classification which dominated in Soviet linguistics some decades ago, which considered Corsican a Central Italian dialect close to Roman, Toscanian and others, is now believed as wrong. Maybe it used to be so, but nowadays the development of Corsican writing and speech apart from official Italian encourages the formation of the single Corsican language. But anyway it carries many Italian features. Besides, Corsican speech preserved much of the pre-Indo-European substratum - about 40% percent of its lexical composition in non-Romance. This substratum words are sometimes considered as close to ancient Sardian language spoken at Sardinia.